Update

Ok, tonight we did 9 quarts of dill pickles and 12 quarts of bread and butter pickles. We probably still have 14 quarts worth of cucumbers left. We won't get to these until Saturday though.

TTFN
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Gramma & Grampa's Pasta Sauce

This is a family recipe that I'll wager only family members will appreciate. It isn't a 15 generation Italian recipe that came to America on a boat. Nope, it was invented right here in the states by my Mother's parents and it was born out of the necessity to feed 6 children with what little money they had. I use the term recipe loosely because they didn't really follow a recipe when they made it. They just used whatever they could get their hands on and they put it all together in the same pot and cooked it for a long time. When it was ready it always had the same distinctive taste that still takes me back 35 years today. My mother, being the oldest, remembered many of the ingredients that were gathered to make the sauce, so it wasn't too difficult to recreate. Below is our rendition of this family recipe.

Gramma & Grampa's Pasta Sauce

10-12 quarts tomatoes, skinned and cored

1 large onion, chopped

24 oz tomato paste

2 lbs chicken hearts

2 lbs chicken gizzards

1 large pork bone or boney pork chop

1 chicken back or chicken thigh with the skin

10 cloves garlic, pressed

1/4 c salt

2 tbsp pepper

1/4 c sugar

1/2 c fresh oregano, chopped

1/4 c fresh parsley, chopped

1/2 c fresh basil, chopped

2 sprigs of rosemary

4 bay leaves

1/2 tbsp sage or poultry seasoning

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Heat the oil in a 15 quart sauce pot. Add onions and pressed garlic to the pot to render the aromatics into the oil. This process should only take a few minutes. Do not scorch the garlic or onions. Add tomatoes. If using fresh tomatoes, crush them with your hands in the pot after they have been skinned and cored. We actually added 2 28oz cans of crushed tomatoes to the pot because we didn't have quite enough tomatoes from the garden. Fresh tomatoes are not a must and we used them because that is what we had. Add salt, pepper, sugar and herbs to the pot and bring to a boil. Stir often to avoid scorching. Lower heat and add all the meat and bones. Make sure you count the boney things that are added so you can fish them out later. Simmer uncovered for at least 8 hours and if using fresh tomatoes, at least 12 hours is needed. Stir at least every hour. The sauce will transform from a bright red runny mixture to a full bodied dark red sauce. When the sauce is done fish out the bones, bay leaves and rosemary sprigs(if you can find them).

If dried herbs are substituted, only use 1/3 the amount listed above. Most of the moisture has been removed from the dried herbs, so volumetrically they are not compatible. I would encourage everyone to use fresh herbs as often as possible, but I understand that isn't always easy.

As you can see from the picture, we decided to can this batch. The freezer tends to get crowded and with the new canner this became an option. We ended up with 10 quarts of sauce from a beginning volume of about 14 quarts. We'll see how it holds up. Enjoy! ;-)

TTFN

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Update

Tonight we processed the apples and canned 11 quarts of bread and butter pickles. I want to pass on a couple of ideas that may be of use in the fruit processing for pies. In last night's update I mentioned freezing peach pie filling. We made a big batch of filling and lined pie plates with plastic wrap and filled them with the filling. We then covered them and stuck them in the freezer. When they are frozen we will take them out of the pie plates and wrap them for stacking in the freezer. When we are ready to make a pie, we will take one of the frozen pie fillings and thaw it and have our pre-measured and prepared pie filling ready to go. I can't see any reason this shouldn't work on any similar pie. The next idea that may be of use is the way we processed the apples tonight. We peeled and cored the apples like we normally would for pie filling and soaked them in lemon juice water to keep the oxidation at bay. We lined a cookie sheet with plastic wrap and put the apple on the plastic in rows and layers with more plastic wrap between layers. When these are frozen, we can put individual apple slices in a freezer bag and pull as many as we want out later for making pies or whatever else we need them for. More pickles tomorrow night. :-)

TTFN

B

Mild Green Chile Sauce

The pepper plants are still cranking. As a matter of fact, there are probably enough peppers ready to pick for another batch by now. Green chile sauce comes in handy for all sorts of things, so a few jars will definitely get used over the next 8 months or so. I never made this before, so I got on the internet and read how others do it and this is what I came up with:

Mild Green Chile Sauce

25 Jalepeno peppers

10 green Cowhorn peppers

15 green Cayenne peppers

10 Hungarian Wax peppers

13 dried chinese hot peppers, divided

10 cloves garlic

2 tbsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 large red tomato

2 small red bell peppers

1 yellow bell pepper

1 tbsp olive oil

4 c distilled vinegar

De-stem all the peppers. Also de-seed the bell peppers. Process all ingredients except olive oil, vinegar and 8 dried chinese peppers in a food processor. Heat oil in a 4 quart or larger pot and add processed ingredients and vinegar. Bring to a boil and then lower heat and simmer for several hours. I started with about 6 pints of material and ended up with  4 pints. I added 2 dried chinese hot peppers to each pint and canned the result according to the Ball Blue book.

This recipe was driven by the produce gathered from my bucket garden. Any mixture of ingredients similar to this will result in a similar product. Use what you have. The resulting product was fairly mild, so I added 2 dried chinese hot peppers to each pint before canning, to add a little heat. Enjoy! :-)

TTFN

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Update

Ok, we have a busy week ahead of us. This past weekend a friend arranged for me to receive 10 lbs of plums, 15 lbs of apples, 10 lbs of peaches and about 80 lbs of cucumbers. With the stock we already had from the bucket garden and the new goodies, in the past two days we managed to can 5 quarts of plums, can 3 pints of plum jam, freeze 3 peach pie fillings, bake 1 peach cobbler, bake 2 loaves of sourdough bread, and make 2 batches of ratatouille. We have untold quarts of pickles to make yet. Look for all these entries in the next few weeks.

TTFN

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Canned Peaches

  A friend called on a Sunday afternoon around 2pm and said he had peaches for me and that they were a little on the ripe side and would need processed as soon as possible. Well, I guess it was time to learn how to can peaches! Fortunately when I picked up the pressure canner I got more jars and the Ball Blue Book which comes highly recommended by the way. I got mine for $2.99 at my local country store. It is well worth the info inside. Especially if you are a beginner like myself. I got the peaches home at 6pm and we had 7 quarts cooling on the counter by 9pm. Not too bad for the first time. 7 quarts may not seem like much, but each jar holds between 25 and 30 peach halves.

  We blanched the peaches in batches of about 10 to slip the skins off, sliced them in half, scooped the pit and reddish flesh out and submersed them in a lemon water ice bath until canning time. The lemon did a good job of keeping the peaches nice and bright. There weren't instructions for pressure canning the peaches so I used the time for water bath processing instead. The blue book recommends a 30 minute time for the boiling water bath processing method and I later read that 10 minutes is sufficient in pressure canner, so I will remember that for next time. I tasted them for the first time last night and I thought they were pretty good. I highly recommend canning whatever you'll eat. It is satisfying and you have control over what goes in the jar. :-)

TTFN

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Mel's Famous Brisket Tacos

My buddy Mel invited me over for dinner not too long ago and made his brisket tacos. He has been talking about these tacos for weeks and now that I have had them, I can see why. These things rock! If you like TexMex, then you will love these.

Taco Filling

5 lb brisket

1 c taco seasoning

2 jalapeno, sliced

1 tbsp black pepper

1 tsp salt

1 tsp red pepper flake

1 12oz can diced tomatoes (with green peppers and onions)

24 oz water

(3) ONLY (3) Drops of Da’Bomb Hot Sauce (1.5 Million Scoville)

1 can french fried onions

Sear the brisket. Mix taco seasoning, jalapeno, pepper, salt, pepper flakes, tomatoes, hot sauce and water in the base of a pressure cooker. Bring to a boil and remove from heat. Add brisket to pressure cooker. Cook the brisket in the pressure cooker for 45 minutes according to your cookers intructions.

When the brisket is done, remove it from the pot and shred the meat. Add the meat back into the pot and mix everything up well. Serve the filling in a soft tortilla with your favorite Chipotle BBQ sauce and French Fried Onions. Refried beans and Spanish Rice make great sides. For quick Spanish Rice, Mels adds a jar of salsa to almost ready minute rice and then covers it back up to finish the cooking process.

These were done very well and if I hadn't seen him make everything I may have thought he bought the food prepared from a good TexMex restaurant and pawned it off as his own.

TTFN

BTR